


Three Variations on Shakespeare and One on Southey

by Flourish



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Filk, Gen, Humor, Parody, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-05-25
Updated: 2003-05-25
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flourish/pseuds/Flourish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Parodic poetry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Variations on Shakespeare and One on Southey

**Author's Note:**

> My apologies to Will &amp; Bob.

Let me not to the breaking of memory charms  
Admit impediments. DEs are only DEs   
When they alter when they problems find   
Or bend with the Dark Lord to conquer.  
O yes! They are an ever-shifting lot   
That see the storm coming, and run and hide.  
They are the leaf cast on the wandering wind  
Whose worth's well known, and every movement spied.  
They are not the Ministry's fool, though their fortunes  
Within its tiny compass come;  
They alter only in each hour and week  
That they avoid always the knife-thin edge of doom.   
If this be error and deadly lies  
My life be taken and my name despised.

* * *

When in disgrace with the Ministry, in Azkaban  
I all alone beweep my jailéd state,  
And trouble the Dementors with my howling cries,  
And look upon my hair and curse its fate,  
Wishing me like to one more rich in Galleons  
Free like him, like him with a reputation possessed,  
Desiring this man's contacts, and that man's friends,  
With what I still am allowed contented least;  
Yet in these thoughts my jailors most despising  
Haply I think on Animagi - and then my state  
Like to a dog at break of day arising  
From sullen earth, howls hymns at my cell gate;  
For my other form taken, such hope brings  
That then I may think on happier things.

* * *

They sin who tell us Voldie can die.  
With death all other people fly,  
A fleck in his immortal eye.  
In this world Grindelwald cannot dwell,  
Morgana Fay is in the vaults of Hell.  
But ah! Tom Riddle, Lord of the Earth  
Shall ne'er perish where he had his birth;  
for He is indestructible.  
His white wan face forever burneth,  
from Hogwarts he came, to Hogwarts returneth;  
To him the Muggles are a troubled guest,  
At times to be decieved, at times opprest,  
Then to be tried and purified  
And sent to Heaven and eternal rest.  
He worketh here with toil and care  
That we be here and they be there.

* * *

 

To filk, or not to filk, that is the question:  
Whether 'tis nobler for the songs to suffer  
The slings and arrows of outrageous karaoke,  
Or to change words and write out all one's troubles,  
And by the writing not sing. To filk: to fic;  
Copyright! And by a fic to say we end  
The heart-ache, and the thousand plot holes  
That stories are heir to. 'Tis a defacing  
Devoutly to be wish'd.To filk, to fic;  
To fic? Perchance to publish! aye, there's the rub  
For in that book of doom what lawsuits may come,  
When we have shuffled off our fanly coil,  
Must give us pause: there's the respect  
That we may lose should we live a long life;  
For who would bear the mark of a fanfic writer,  
The bad story's sap, the proud troll's vitriol,  
The pangs of bad reviews, the lack of them  
The insolence of newbies, and the spurns  
That publishers of the worthy give,  
When you yourself might your peace make  
By never writing at all? Who would stories write  
To be embarrassed about in later life  
But that the love of characters (e'en after character death)  
The undiscovered OTPs from whose bourn  
No shipper returns, puzzles the senses,  
And makes us rather write those characters we know  
Than fly to others that we make ourselves?  
Thus fannishness does make writers of us all  
And thus the native hue of computer glow  
Is painted o'er with the pixelled word,  
And enterprises of great depth and word count  
With this regard their plots turn awry  
And lose the name of original fiction.


End file.
